


Hug Glue

by girlinterrupted



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Depression, M/M, break-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlinterrupted/pseuds/girlinterrupted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A work inspired by <a href="http://dearoldlove.tumblr.com/post/38873280626/hug-glue">this</a> submission to dearoldlove:</p>
<p>"I just need you to be my friend right now. I’m falling apart, losing myself piece by piece and I think a hug from you would help hold me together for just a little longer. So please stop ignoring my calls and texts."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hug Glue

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: there are references to suicide and self-harm in this.  
> Proceed at your own caution <3

I still remember every second of conversation we shared outside that coffee shop. You had asked me all about my camping trip, and I eagerly told you every detail about the little girl that met me at the beach and how she had fallen madly in love with me over the last few days. Willingly, I told you everything. It was nearly impossible to remove your text from my memory: ‘Can we meet up and talk?’ Of course, I knew exactly what you wanted to talk about.

There was no doubt in my mind that that was the end. Everything I had wanted was falling apart right in front of me. I cried in my room for a half hour, wiped my eyes, got into the most attractive outfit I could, and met you at the coffee shop. If you were going to breakup with me, I was going to make you regret it the best I could. Looking across the table, there was something in your green eyes telling me you weren’t going to start this. “What did you want to talk about?” I asked you, but I knew already. I asked you because you weren’t going to tell me. You would have let me talk for hours and would have refused to come right out with it.

You fell silent and looked down at your shoes. Maybe you thought that I would look away from you if you weren’t looking at me, but I couldn’t look away. Everything was hanging from a thread. My heart completely stopped, I’m almost positive that it did. After what felt like an eternity of silence, you looked back up at me and said: “I really like you, Niall…”  
  
“Mhmm…” I said. I didn’t mean to say that, but I couldn’t help but to be angry. Bringing me up before you put me down was really unoriginal, especially for you. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have heard those five words at all, and I wouldn’t have seen how sad your eyes looked when you said them.

Biting your lip, you continued, “I just don’t like you like I used to, and I wish I did.”  
  
Yeah, Harry, I wished you did too. For the last month we were dating, I jumped through hoops trying to get you to just want to be with me. Gemma and I even made you cupcakes before we picked you up at the airport when you got back from your trip to Sweden. They were your favorite. I knew they were, but you weren’t happy to see them, or me. Honestly, the last time I remembered you being happy to see me was before you got on that plane. It was after we had kissed goodbye; you were just grinning at me with that stupid dimpled smile of yours. “What?” I said, and you pulled me in for another kiss. “You’re so cute,” you said. You know what I wish? I wish I could forget that.

For the first time that afternoon at the coffeeshop, I couldn’t look at you. My eyes were looking anywhere but into yours. “I always said that if I didn’t like you anymore that I would just break up with you,” I smiled a little, knowing how pathetic I was all the while my eyes found yours again, “But you couldn’t even do that for me.”

That was the best and worst thing I have ever said to you. Not only were those words incredibly accurate, I knew they would tear you apart. They were the kind of words that would sink in later. Maybe not that night, and maybe not that week, but they would sink into your beautiful, perfect mind and make you realize that it took you an entire month to end my suffering. Where was the human decency there? Fuck if I know.

“I’m sorry,” your eyebrows furrowed when you spoke. There were tears in your eyes. Those tears became something that fascinated me for weeks. Why did you cry Harry? You’re the one that broke me heart, so why were you crying when you broke it? Could you hear it breaking from across the table? Did you see right through my pathetic smiles like you always could? Those words ached. My whole body ached.

Right after that, I left. I said goodbye, and wished you luck in life. Tears didn’t well up in my eyes until I was absolutely sure you couldn’t see me any longer, but Jesus, I cried so hard. Sitting on the floor in my room in complete silence, I just cried. Cried, and cried, and cried until my mom came in to check on me. She told me she was sorry.

Everyone was sorry. Everyone asked what happened, and everyone claimed they were there for me if I needed to talk. Everyone apparently cared so much about you and me, but no body really cared about me. No body bothered to check up on me later, when I really need them. After the night I spent crying, I refused to be upset. It was my one and only desire to ‘win the break up.’

One week after the break up I went out with someone else. This was an awful mistake, and instead of becoming the winner of something I couldn’t win, I ended up becoming the most miserable person on the planet. He didn’t get my jokes like you do. He didn’t talk like you do. He didn’t laugh or smile like you do. It was too soon to appreciate someone else, and I realize that now. In that moment though, it felt like a sign from some omnipotent and omniscient being that there was nobody out there better than you.

My mom nearly had a heart attack when I came home from that date sobbing. I was sobbing because you didn’t love me anymore, and I didn’t realize it until that night. The person that was so obsessed with winning had tried to demonize you, but that person was gone. There was nothing to hate about you, and I couldn’t hate you even if I tried my hardest to. That whole night I cried.

It’s been months since that night. Every night since then, I breathe less and less. Do you remember when you told me that I was much stronger than you? Not in the way that I could lift more but in the way that I could handle more. You always told me I could handle anything and that you admired how carefree I was. At that moment, I didn’t think I was as strong as you said I was. Half the time, I could barely handle getting out of bed in the morning.

Sometimes, I thought I was dying. Most of the time, I wished I was. It was lonely without you there. It was like my heart was a house that I had tidied up, put all your favorite books on its shelves, played all your favorite records in, and covered all its walls with your pictures. Without you to live there anymore, the house had no reason to exist. The rooms became messes. The books and the records collected dust. The pictures mocked me from their frames. I hated that house more than anything. I would have demolished it if I was able to.

No one even noticed anymore. No one noticed that I didn’t wear short sleeved shirts anymore, and no one seemed to care if they had noticed. No one saw how tired my body was. No one noticed how much weight I had lost. No one noticed how much I missed you. That was the problem, mostly. No one fucking noticed that I was falling apart.

Why wouldn’t you answer me? I knew you got my calls, and I knew you got my texts. I wasn’t asking for a relationship other than friendship. My tears had flooded the house I built for you, and I needed you to help me fix it. You were my best friend, and I would have willingly give back every kiss you ever gave me if you would just be my best friend again.

Please, I begged, answer your phone.

It was the hardest night I had ever experienced. The bottle of hydrocodone pills kept staring me down. If I took them, do you think a tornado would have torn that house down? Do people who kill themselves still get to go to heaven? There was so much more to handle than your absence. College wasn’t working out. I couldn’t find a job. There was absolutely nothing in my future at all because I had nothing going for me. Everyone else had moved on to bigger and better things. I was just sitting there, waiting on happiness to show up. When I looked into the mirror, I didn’t see anything but overwhelming sadness. Not even the Prozac I took every morning was making my reflection any easier to see.

One more chance was all I gave myself. If you answered, I would throw the pills in the trash. If you didn’t, I would swallow them all. It’d been months since I’d really cried, but I cried then as I dialed your number. The numbers were so familiar that it was like they were written on my finger nails. It was if I had seen those numbers every day of my life every time I looked down at my hands.

They used to be hands that you would hold in yours.

I placed the phone to my ear and prayed. My mother always told me to pray, and I had never been very good at it. Until then, praying had always felt like it was fake and forced, but that prayer felt real to me. If there was ever a good time for God to interject in my life, that was the time to. The ringing on the other end seemed to last forever. I was nearly positive you wouldn’t answer.

“Niall?” You answered. The confusion you felt was evident in your voice, but I didn’t care. It was pleasant just to hear you saying anything at all.

Despite trying to keep myself from crying, I whimpered into the receiver, “I just need you to be my friend right now. I’m falling apart, losing myself piece by piece and I think a hug from you would help hold me together for just a little.”  
  
There was a silence on the other end, and suddenly there was a knock at my door. My face scrunched up; I was so confused and kept my ear pressed to the phone. I waited for you to say anything at all. The rain outside pitter pattered on the windows. It would have been almost peaceful if my soul wasn’t in so much turmoil.

When I opened the door, I dropped my phone. My surprise had momentarily paralyzed me. I wouldn’t have been able to keep hold of anything. Harry, you were standing there in my doorway, soaked to the bone. The walk from your house to mine was nearly twenty minutes; you had been walking before I even called. The sopping wet hug that you pulled me into saved my life. Suddenly, it was like the house had been cleaned and dusted again. The flood was gone. I could breathe again.

“I will try my best to hold you together,” you whispered in my ear and kissed my forehead, “I won’t let go again, I swear.” We were both in pain without each other, and I could hear that pain in your voice just as you had heard it in mine only moments before. We were both shattered into little pieces; we were two broken people. Like cracked, broken mirrors, we merely reflected distorted images.

That sopping wet hug in my doorway put the pieces back together. It was hug glue, and it was all we needed.


End file.
